The pricey Sydney pads still looking for buyers years after being listed

This waterfront property in Avalon Beach has been up for sale since 2010.

THEY’VE got dramatic water views, designer finishes and rooms galore — but some of Sydney’s most alluring homes appear to have become a hard sell.

The homes have languished on the market unsold for up to eight years, failing to attract buyers even during Sydney’s recent property boom when even poorly presented homes were selling for inflated prices.

The properties include a waterfront estate on Cabarita Rd, Avalon Beach first listed way back in May 2010.

That listing date was a month before Julia Gillard took over as Prime Minister from Kevin Rudd and just after the Iceland volcano Eyjafjallajokull made international headlines for disrupting flights across the world.

75 Bungan Head Rd, Newport has been up for sale since September 2014.

Known as Marara, the property stretches across 12,685sqm of waterfront and 119m of sandy beach and includes three residences, two boathouses, a jetty and slipway.

Owner Peter Higgins, co-founder of brokerage Mortgage Choice, first listed the home with hopes of $40 million before slashing it to $25 million in 2012. It is now listed at an undisclosed price thought to be over $20 million.

A seven-bedroom manor in Vaucluse known as Elwatan has been on and off the market since 2011 in what agent Brad Pillinger described as a “passive sale”.

28 Florida Rd, Palm Beach has been up for sale since February 2013.

He added that the owners were no longer looking to sell, although an advert for the home was posted as recently as February, which remains on realestate.com.au. The original listed price was over $15 million.

Back on the northern beaches, a four-bedroom house on Bungan Head Rd in Newport has been up for sale for $8 million since September 2014.

Further north, a home on Florida Rd, Palm Beach was first listed a year earlier in September 2013 and is now $5.9 million, some $600,000 below the previous price of $6.5 million.

The average Sydney home currently takes about a month to sell, CoreLogic data showed.

President of the Real Estate Buyers’ Agent Association Rich Harvey said homes that lingered on the market for prolonged periods were typically overpriced.

“It’s likely the vendors are completely out of touch with the market,” he said.

And while upper market homes have a track record of taking longer to sell, Mr Harvey said their owners still had to “meet the market”.

Elwatan, a trophy home in Vaucluse, was first listed in 2011.

LJ Hooker’s David Watson, one of six agents who have tried to sell the Marara property since 2010, said the property hadn’t sold because of “a complex web of everything” but declined to comment further.

Other agents have pointed out the market in the Palm Beach area, where many of the slow selling properties are based, has only recently begun to reawaken after a long slump following the GFC.

This Hopetoun Avenue home in Mosman was first listed in March 2014.

But vendors may have a limited time to capitalise. Figures from SQM Research showed the number of homes currently for sale across Sydney has shot up 33 per cent over the past year, with sellers facing increased competition to attract buyers.

The softer sales conditions helped push Sydney’s median home price down 2.4 per cent over the past three months and 0.5 per cent over the past year.

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